Game of Thrones fans react to next book being delayed

Random House announced Wednesday that a prequel to the "Ice and Fire" series is coming out November 20.

"You will, however, be able to return to Westeros this year", he wrote.

Well there are no twists or spoilers here: Author George R.R. Martin has announced that, once again, the sixth novel in hisA Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter, will not be released in 2018. Within it fans will find information on all of the Targaryen kings starting with Aegon I...and this is just the first volume of the history books. The author put an approximation of about 75 black and white images in Fire & Blood, something he paralleled to a special edition of his A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms hardcover.

"No, winter is not coming ... not in 2018, at least", Martin said.

Martin wrote on his blog that readers will not be getting the next book in the series because he's taken time out to write another book chronicling the history of Westeros. You're going to have to keep waiting for The Winds of Winter. The novel is set 300 years before the events of "A Song of Ice and Fire" and will detail "the Targaryen civil war that almost ended their dynasty forever", according to Martin's publishers, Bantam and Voyager.

It does come with illustrations, and although the manuscript itself might be shorter than A Game of Thrones per Martin himself, it could be that Fire and Blood may rival it in size just because of all those illustrations. This is not a traditional narrative and was never meant to be... let's call this one "imaginary history" instead. I love reading popular histories myself, and that's what I was aiming for here ...

It would be exciting news if not for the one big sticking point: the book series isn't finished and fans have been waiting many long years for "The Winds of Winter".

"The only answer I can give is... ah, well, no one is sure yet, and anyway, I am not allowed to say".

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